The City of Redmond, Microsoft, and Sound Transit cut the ribbon Monday on a highway-straddling pedestrian and bike bridge connecting the new Redmond Technology light rail station directly across both State Route 520 and local streets in Redmond. The bridge, funded entirely by Microsoft by way of a public-private partnership authorized under state law, has been in the works for more than 10 years. With the start of service on Sound Transit’s 2 Line this Saturday, the bridge provides a multimodal connection at the line’s northern terminus until service is extended into Downtown Redmond in 2025.
The new 1,100-foot bridge provides a covered connection between the SR 520 multi-use trail on the west side of the state highway and the light rail station, parking garage and bus station, but also over NE 156th Street in Redmond, linking the east and west halves of Microsoft’s 500-acre campus. The bridge includes separate walking and biking areas, public seating along the span, and significant amounts of greenery.
Microsoft’s financial contribution, enabled through Redmond’s community facilities district, totaled $33.3 million and also included nearby streetscape improvements. The company oversaw the design of the project, with Kiewit Engineering Group, the same firm that worked on the 2 Line, completing the engineering work and AECOM handling the design. Now the bridge will be owned by the City of Redmond, with Microsoft helping with some of the maintenance costs, including upkeep on the custom-made white canopy.
King County Executive and Sound Transit board chair Dow Constantine was front and center at the ribbon holding line.
“Events like today’s really do demonstrate how this region can unite, unite time and again and move forward on shared priorities: mobility, connection, safety, environmental stewardship,” Constantine said. “And on Earth Day, it’s appropriate to highlight the connection this bridge will give bikers and pedestrians to the 520 bike trail and make it even easier for people to get where they need to go without having to haul and park 4,000 pounds of plastic and steel with them.”
In her remarks before the ribbon-cutting, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci noted the importance of improving bike and pedestrian connections to current and impending light rail stations.
“That powerful high capacity transit connection only works when we’ve provided connections from the stations to all the places people want to go, and this bridge is just a high and fantastic example of what a connection can and will and should be,” Balducci said. “It’s truly an amazing accomplishment and it’s going to be so useful to so many people. It’s also a connection in the sense that travelling by transit, by bus, by bike, or on foot, is a much more socially connected way of getting around […] This bridge is going to make people happy.”
